The present invention disclosed herein relates to a control apparatus, and more particularly, to a control apparatus and method of two-dimensionally addressing a signal, in which an electric signal is applied to a specific point or area selected on a two-dimensional plane to receive a signal from the specific point or area.
In a device having a predetermined type two-dimensional cell arrangement, such as LCD flat panel displays, memory chips and touch panels, it is necessary to two-dimensionally address an electric signal in order to separately control each cell. The easiest method of separately controlling a two-dimensional cell array is to electrically wire all of the cells. However, as the number of cells to be controlled is increased, a two-dimensional arrangement of the wirings becomes complicated, and a driving circuit thereof also becomes complicated, and finally the arrangement becomes impossible.
In a technique which is the most widely applied currently to solve the problem, a switching element such as a transistor is connected to each cell so as to turn on a switch corresponding to the cell to be driven and thus to apply an electric signal to the corresponding cell or allow the corresponding cell to output the electric signal. In case of a DRAM, the wirings are divided into a word line and a bit line. The word line is connected to a gate portion of a transistor connected with a capacitor having information so as to determine on/off of the switch.
In case of an ON state, information of the bit line is transferred to each selected capacitor, or information of the capacitor is read to an outside through the bit line.
The LCD flat panel display also has similar operation principles.
When the electric signal is two-dimensionally addressed using the switching element, a main issue is that such device may be configured only with a material with which the switching element may be manufactured. Most of the switch elements are semiconductor-based elements such as the transistors, and thus have to be manufactured on a semiconductor substrate or a semiconductor thin film.
In the majority of cases, to manufacture the switching element having good switching properties, a semiconductor process at high temperature is required. Therefore, it is difficult to manufacture the switching device on a substrate formed of plastic, glass or the like which may not endure the high temperature, and thus it is also difficult to embody the two-dimensional addressing of the electric signal using the switching element.
The touch panel is another device which requires the two-dimensional addressing. The touch panel which may detect a touched position on a flat panel surface is configured in various manners.
In the touch panel, the device is configured to recognize a position on a two-dimensional plane through various signal changes when an object is in contact with the specific position on a surface of the touch panel. One of the most widely used methods is a resistive touch panel. In the resistive touch panel, a transversal electrode arrangement and a longitudinal electrode arrangement are disposed up and down. An embossing space is arranged between the up and down electrode arrangements. When a predetermined pressure is applied by the object, the upper electrode and the lower electrode are in contact with each other, and thus a change in a current flow occurs, and the position on plane coordinates may be recognized by a resulting value thereof.
The method is characterized by being configured only with the upper and lower electrode arrangements without using of the switching element in order to recognize the position on the two-dimensional plane coordinates. However, this method is not a field control method, but a method of obtaining information through the change in the current flow. And this method is characterized in that only information on the position of a contacted area may be recognized, but a signal may not be applied to the specific point or area.
As described above, the typical technique has a disadvantage in that an electric circuit should be configured by grafting the switching element, which is complicated and restricted in the substrate material, in order to apply the electric signal to the specific point on the two-dimensional plane coordinates or receive the signal therefrom.
At present, it may be very difficult to configure a structure capable of controlling the electric signal on the two-dimensional plane coordinates only by arranging the simple electrode arrangements such as the electrode arrangement structure of the resistive touch panel.